Reading Street Centers

One of the emails from one of my online learning communities just asked a question about managing centers. I thought it might be something that others would be interested in. I love seeing/hearing how everyone works things in their classrooms. This is the way we do it!

We use the flip charts provided by Reading Street (RS) (except technology because we substitute activities on our promethean boards for this center) and we ADD to them. Our reading block is 90 min +. The center charts are a great start, but they take 3 minutes to complete. (I believe that each is listed as 15 minutes, but that is a stretch)Silly to think that it would be enough, but I like it cause it allows me the flexibility to add my own center stuff, things we’ve purchased from Lakeshore, etc…. Here’s how we do it:

We have the crayon pocket chart with red/blue/green/yellow crayons. We have the children divided into mixed ability groups and their names (on a piece of sentence strip) are at the bottom of the chart. One student in each slot on the crayon. We have 18 children so it’s 4-5 names on each crayon. Then at the top of the crayon we put the titles of the centers. For instance the blue crayon might have these centers at the top: Word work (use the flip chart), worksheet (usually one from RS that reinforces the skill taught at word work), then there will be an independent activity (book boxes/read to self) and then something else, like Stamp a Word (where they use letter stamps to stamp and write spelling words).

The other 3 crayons will also have 4-5 centers listed. We try to make it a combo of active learning (where they manipulate or move around or interact) to balance out passive learning (where the sit and take in information) i.e. a listening center.

At the end of the day, you move the center ACTIVITIES to the next crayon (the children stay in the same place) taking the end crayon’s activities and moving it to the first crayon and bumping everything else down one. The students ONLY go to the centers listed on their crayon for that day….Make sense?

Because the children are in mixed ability groups, when you call the blue star readers (all of my groups different are colored stars) there are still some yellows(on level people) to help the greens (below level).

We look at the skills listed on the center flip charts and then we match what we already have. For instance, this week we are doing Where Are All My Animal Friends Unit 3, Story 6. For writing this week (center flip chart) says to write about some ways animals take care of themselves in the winter. I paired this with a non-fiction listening set about baby animals because it covers some of the information they will need to have to write effectively. Then they are doing 2 other activities…..and for the life of me I cannot think of what they are right now….. but you get the point.

Another important thing to know is that there will be 4 crayons x 4-5 centers going on….but not all of the centers are in use at the same times. You will not have pandemonium, going on. It is very controlled and calm. I promise. With the above mentioned 4-5 centers described for listening, only listening will be going on at one time. After they finish listening, they will break apart and move to wherever they want to go to complete the other activities (if it is a worksheet, etc).

We also only do center rotations 4 days per week because specials and unexpected things take up one day. If there is a week where we get it all done by Thursday, then the children who have completed all of their work have some free choice centers on Friday. And of course, Friday is our assessment day. We’ve been doing it this way for years. We’ve only had RS for 3 years, but when we got it we just incorporated the center flip charts and moved on. I hope this helps give you a sense of how we do things. It works for us. How do you do centers in your classroom? Alicia